P: Provide Preference File Health Check, backup, Reset, and Restore.

"check the Preference File health"

I think that this would be practically impossible to implement. As discussed in that other thread, I believe that most instances of "corrupted" preferences are the result of a deeply flawed architectural design. In addition to explicit user settings, the preferences file also stores a large amount of internal user-interface state. Due to a deeply flawed architecture, it captures elements of that state inconsistently -- rather than doing a "point-in-time" capture of the state, it sometimes captures elements of the state as they are being changed.  

Fully support the general idea. I had posted the following Idea in the old feedback forum, which got 14 votes, but it didn't get copied here:

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https://feedback-readonly.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-reset-preferences-should-save-a-backup-of-the-preferences/5f5f46084b561a3d426f8e72 

Lightroom Classic: Reset Preferences should save a backup of the preferences

Reset Preferences (Alt/Opt + Shift when starting LR) should make a time-stamped copy of the current preferences file, and it should give the user the option of restoring preferences from one of the recent copies.

This would directly help the myriad users who are told to "reset preferences" when anything goes wonky in the user interface, making it easier for them to restore their original preferences in the frequent case when resetting doesn't help.

And it would make it easier for Adobe product developers to track down the bug(s) in the preferences design that "corrupts" them so frequently. When a user on the forums reports that resetting solved their problem, we could ask them to send the previous version of the preferences file to Adobe for an autopsy.

This would be very simple to implement. The Reset Preferences dialog would give the user these options:

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Reset Lightroom preferences?

[Start Normally]
[Reset Preferences, Making a Backup Copy]
[Restore Preferences from a Backup Copy]
[Show in Finder/Explorer]
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The [Restore Preferences from a Backup Copy] button would pop up a list of previously saved copies of the preferences file, letting the user choose one.
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tim_mcmahon_8007176

Great idea! I've very seldom had issues with Lightroom but the tohught of having to remember and restore existing preferences has always put me off resetting prefs as a fix option.

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Victoria_Bampton_Lightroom_Queen

Love that idea.

Victoria Bampton a.k.a. The Lightroom Queen
www.lightroomqueen.com
Author of Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ and Adobe Lightroom - Edit Like a Pro books.

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anthony_blackett

Yes, a good idea. I usually make my own backup of the preferences file before trying a reset because I have learned that resetting often doesn't fix my problem, so then I can manually restore my prefs from the backup.

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carlos_cardona_4982447

It’s unanimous!

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oldsteve

Ditto Photoshop. Why cannot Adobe just give us a way to do whatever resetting Preferences does without losing choices?

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John_R_Ellis

The evidence suggests there is a serious architectural flaw in how LR updates its preferences file. (Note that the preferences file stores much more than just the settings the user has selected.) See this thread for more details:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/lightroom-reset-your-preferences-moving-from-the-magic-spell-to-a-more-serious-approach/idc-p/12668692#M25896

If my understanding is correct, fixing the flaw involves a large amount of effort and technical expertise.